Apple Fights Back Over Bending iPhone 6 Plus Reports

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Apple has been suffering from a series of PR problems of late. Nude celebrity photos were stolen from its iCloud storage service. The company paid a reported $100 million to rock band U2 to give its "Songs of Innocence" album to all 500 million iTunes customers, and so far, less than 7 percent have bothered to listen. Then came the glitch in Apple's latest iOS upgrade that rendered some customer phones unable to make or receive calls.

And then there's its latest high-profile problem, which people have come to call Bendgate. Some consumers and members of the press have reported that their iPhone 6 Pluses bent while they rested in their pockets. Within a short amount of time, the Internet was buzzing. Twitter has a #bendgate hashtag. At last count today, a search for "Bendgate" will return almost 2,800 YouTube video results, with people demonstrating the problem as well as mocking Apple for all its recent issues, as CNET did:

The "You're sitting on it wrong" remark is a reference to the antenna problems of the iPhone 4 -- an episode called Antennagate -- during which then-CEO Steve Jobs essentially chastised people for holding their phones in a way that caused its antennas to interfere with each other and drop calls.

Ah, the mockery, the mockery. Apparently it has gotten to Apple, which quickly mounted a PR campaign to try and discredit the notion that somehow the iPhone 6 is inherently flawed -- or flimsy.

In a statement sent around to media outlets, the company said that its "iPhones are designed, engineered and manufactured to be both beautiful and sturdy" and that only nine customers had actually complained to Apple about a bent iPhone 6 Plus.

If you have a problem, Apple says to contact it directly. But otherwise -- hey, don't slouch in that chair!